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[Egan_BW]

Agreed on every point. With the addition that "sufficiently advanced technology" is a form of magic and thus should not be a thing in no-magic worlds.

[Bumber]

In a non-magic world, the player could use trickery and sleight of hand to pretend to perform miracles.

[GoblinCookie]

Agreed on every point. With the addition that "sufficiently advanced technology" is a form of magic and thus should not be a thing in no-magic worlds.

That is not true.  If I go to the Amazon rainforest with a Iphone and show it to the rainforest tribes, those tribes might think that the Iphone works by magic.  But the Iphone is not actually a form of magic and the real-world's magic-rating does not increase as a result of those primitives thinking my phone works by magic. 

In a non-magic world, the player could use trickery and sleight of hand to pretend to perform miracles.

Not if it is something that *they* can replicate themselves.  So in effect sleight of hand and trickery is really just the same as superior technology, nobody is convinced by a trick that they can themselves do; it is only tricks that are beyond their technological level that can persuade them. 

Remember that people in a totally non-magical world do not naturally believe in miracles.  This is a completely foreign concept to that world, so when someone does something that seems miraculous there first resort is to think they are subject to some conjuring trick, not to invent a new concept of magic/miracles.  It is only when you are so technologically advanced that they cannot replicate your trick that they might begrudgingly accept that everything they know about the world is wrong and miracles/magic do actually happen.

It is entirely possible to be worshipped as simply a human being, what matters in any case is that you convince folks that you are 'special'.  The difference between declaring yourself a mortal and declaring yourself to be a god is that in the former case you are proving you are a special human while in the latter case you are simply proving you are a god.  Your specialness is what is important mechanically, not whether you seek to be venerated as a special human or worshipped as just a god. 

It is a far easier to declare yourself to be something familiar than something new.  That means that if you chose to be the "technological ascendancy" of a non-magical world it is easier to convince people that you are in fact someone with superior technology than that the supernatural actually exists and you are it.  In either case you cannot actually be supernatural, you are objectively lying to them if you call yourself a god. 

If you claim to be a god, you will have a harder time convincing them of your true nature, but if a special enough then you might well manage this.  The reasons to do this are that as a god they treat you differently than as a technological ascendancy, in the latter case they will assume you have scientific secrets they can use; trouble if that you are just someone using a Post-1400 tech mind-control device, not someone that necessarily opened a science book in your life.  There are therefore reasons to be pretend to be a god, not having to trawl through libraries to plagiarise scientific knowledge to cover up the fact that while you use futuristic tech, you don't know much science. 

If you successfully convince people that you are a god however, you will have introduced a whole new false concept into the no-magic world.  As a result the world will end up developing other entirely false religions based entirely upon fraud and deception. 

[Bumber]

Not if it is something that *they* can replicate themselves.  So in effect sleight of hand and trickery is really just the same as superior technology, nobody is convinced by a trick that they can themselves do; it is only tricks that are beyond their technological level that can persuade them. 

Remember that people in a totally non-magical world do not naturally believe in miracles.  This is a completely foreign concept to that world, so when someone does something that seems miraculous there first resort is to think they are subject to some conjuring trick, not to invent a new concept of magic/miracles.  It is only when you are so technologically advanced that they cannot replicate your trick that they might begrudgingly accept that everything they know about the world is wrong and miracles/magic do actually happen.

And yet some people believe in magic and fortune tellers IRL.

Post-1400 tech isn't going to be added to DF. Best we're getting is that your civ knows chemistry and astronomy, while theirs doesn't.

[GoblinCookie]

And yet some people believe in magic and fortune tellers IRL.

Real-life is not necessarily a non-magic world.  A non-magical world is not a world that is realistic, it is a world that has even less magic than reality does.  Now to get philosophical, let's define magic since Egan_BW has not responded, so giving me the opportunity to explain the difference between sufficiently advanced technology and magic.

Magic is the ability of changes in the mental state (or things that are part of the mind, like ideas) to directly influence the state of material reality.  The difference between sufficiently advanced technology and magic is that the former does not work based upon the power of the mind or will or ideas of it's wielder to influence functioning of material reality.  Now it does not matter the extent to which this is true, *any* independent ability of the mind to influence material reality at all means your world is not a non-magic world. 

People believe in magic in real-life (in the wizards and fireballs sense) because they already believe they have free-will and understand what that means.  Free-will is magic, because *rather* than everything we do happening due to chance and contingency according to the universally applicable laws of physics, our ability to change our mental state influences the functioning of the material world.  Only if people have no free-will and their actions are no different than a complicated version of the boulder falling down the mountain, we do not truly have a no-magic world. 

Now to step back into proposing game mechanics.  As a technological ascendancy, you perfectly allowed to deceive the world into believing you are a supernatural being when there are no such things in reality; you are just not allowed to actually be a god in such a world.  Though it is harder than convincing them you are a technological ascendancy, it fundamentally alters the world.  If you convince them you exist, they will start to believe in other false supernatural claims as well, when before they had no concept of such things. 

Including free-will.   

Post-1400 tech isn't going to be added to DF. Best we're getting is that your civ knows chemistry and astronomy, while theirs doesn't.

That is the problem with claiming to be a technological ascendancy, whether you are or not.  They expect you to teach them about all sorts of scientific secrets, but you don't have any to tell them save those already in the game.  That is why you would want to pretend to be a god and deceive the whole world into believing in the supernatural. 

Your character does not use post-1400 tech in the game.  No post-1400 tech or science is ever known or used by your character, regardless of whether you are truthfully a technologically ascendancy or not.  The player is not the character, the player is using Post-1400 tech from OUTSIDE the game to control a character or group of characters INSIDE the game that has no such tech and never will. 

The reason that the technological ascendancy is needed is that the only other truthful option in a non-magic world is to actually be the person you are playing that.  This is an option but it creates problems if there is no afterlife (like in a non-magical world), because the player cannot logically keep on playing if he *is* the character he is playing as dies.  The reason we have a technological ascendancy option is not because I relish bending the Post-1400 tech rules, it is because it is a mechanical necessity for the player to be able to play multiple characters in the same world. 

In a magical world you can play as a god or supernatural being, if there is a afterlife you can play on as the ghost of your dead character but what am I to do in a world with no gods and no afterlife?

[Egan_BW]

Unlike many people here, I see no reason to try to explain my opinion to you, GC. It would not be a very productive use of my time.

[Bumber]

The reason that the technological ascendancy is needed is that the only other truthful option in a non-magic world is to actually be the person you are playing that.  This is an option but it creates problems if there is no afterlife (like in a non-magical world), because the player cannot logically keep on playing if he *is* the character he is playing as dies.

There needn't be any in-game justification. The player is merely the narrator of a non-magical DF world, which we recognize is just a game.

[Strik3r]

The reason that the technological ascendancy is needed is that the only other truthful option in a non-magic world is to actually be the person you are playing that.  This is an option but it creates problems if there is no afterlife (like in a non-magical world), because the player cannot logically keep on playing if he *is* the character he is playing as dies.

There needn't be any in-game justification. The player is merely the narrator of a non-magical DF world, which we recognize is just a game.

Honestly? This makes perfect sense for all DF worlds, magical or not. The player has no presence in the gameworld, they're just a narrator or a storyteller.
This works no matter what you're playing: An adventurer, a fortress, a nation or a god.

[GoblinCookie]

Unlike many people here, I see no reason to try to explain my opinion to you, GC. It would not be a very productive use of my time.

But it is a productive use of my time to tell me that?

There needn't be any in-game justification. The player is merely the narrator of a non-magical DF world, which we recognize is just a game.

That is still the default state of affairs.  We are talking about a situation where the player has chosen a different path.

[Egan_BW]

Unlike many people here, I see no reason to try to explain my opinion to you, GC. It would not be a very productive use of my time.

But it is a productive use of my time to tell me that?

Yup!

[Bumber]

That is still the default state of affairs.  We are talking about a situation where the player has chosen a different path.

Weren't we talking about the controlled character becoming / pretending to be a god? We don't need an in-game meta-player for that.

[Dorsidwarf]

And yet some people believe in magic and fortune tellers IRL.

Real-life is not necessarily a non-magic world.  A non-magical world is not a world that is realistic, it is a world that has even less magic than reality does.  Now to get philosophical, let's define magic since Egan_BW has not responded, so giving me the opportunity to explain the difference between sufficiently advanced technology and magic.

Magic is the ability of changes in the mental state (or things that are part of the mind, like ideas) to directly influence the state of material reality.  The difference between sufficiently advanced technology and magic is that the former does not work based upon the power of the mind or will or ideas of it's wielder to influence functioning of material reality.  Now it does not matter the extent to which this is true, *any* independent ability of the mind to influence material reality at all means your world is not a non-magic world. 

People believe in magic in real-life (in the wizards and fireballs sense) because they already believe they have free-will and understand what that means.  Free-will is magic, because *rather* than everything we do happening due to chance and contingency according to the universally applicable laws of physics, our ability to change our mental state influences the functioning of the material world.  Only if people have no free-will and their actions are no different than a complicated version of the boulder falling down the mountain, we do not truly have a no-magic world. 

Now to step back into proposing game mechanics.  As a technological ascendancy, you perfectly allowed to deceive the world into believing you are a supernatural being when there are no such things in reality; you are just not allowed to actually be a god in such a world.  Though it is harder than convincing them you are a technological ascendancy, it fundamentally alters the world.  If you convince them you exist, they will start to believe in other false supernatural claims as well, when before they had no concept of such things. 

...

What?

In a non magic world nobody will believe in magic because according to the bullshit nonsense definition of magic you pulled out of a friggin hat, the real world is a magical realm because free will works by your arbitrary magic, and theoretical people who do not have free will would be incapable of imagining the idea of magic because free will is required for the idea of magic to exist?

what the fucking fuck?

edit: what does that even have to do with game design? You know full well that thats not what Toady means by a "No-magic" world

[Bumber]

...

What?

Don't try to understand it.

Free will, if it exists likely works because there is a physical law that requires that the physical reality conform to it's mental representation.  This law works in reverse also, that is why you can move your arm freely but not engage in matrix-spoon bending.

Your arm moving is possible, that means that the reality will conform to the mind.  You move your imaginary arm and since it corresponds to a possible state that the universe could logically assume your actual arm moves.  You try and move the spoon however and the universe 'says no' because there is no logical way that such an outcome can occur and the principle hence works backwards, your mind is forced to conform to matter rather than the reverse.

[PlumpHelmetMan]

Lol what?

That quote was such a mindfuck I actually made myself laugh just by realizing I was making any attempt whatsoever to understand it.

[GoblinCookie]

Weren't we talking about the controlled character becoming / pretending to be a god? We don't need an in-game meta-player for that.

What we are talking about depends upon what the player answers when they initially set up an object of worship using their character(s). 

There are two questions, "what are you claiming to be?" and "what are you really?".  If the two correspond then you are telling the truth, but you only get one truthful option per character.  You can tell one person you are a god, another person you are a mortal man and a third person that you are a demon but you cannot truthfully answer that you are all three.  A key point here is that it is not possible to claim to truthfully be things that are incompatable with the nature of your world, but you can falsely claim to be anything.

A man pretending to be a god is a just one option, it is what happens if we select our own character for the answer as to what we truthfully are but we take a god as what we are claiming to be.  The problem with choosing to be a man is that unless the afterlife exists in your world, you cannot easily use multiple characters to bolster a single worship cult. 

That is why I came up with the apparently controversial technological ascendancy.  By having the player really be a high-tech being mind-controlling individuals or groups with advanced technology absent from the game-world itself, we can replicate a similar situation as to what happens if the player is truthfully a god; it allows him to use multiple characters to build up a worship cult. 

Don't try to understand it.

Ignorance is so popular nowadays. 

...

What?

In a non magic world nobody will believe in magic because according to the bullshit nonsense definition of magic you pulled out of a friggin hat, the real world is a magical realm because free will works by your arbitrary magic, and theoretical people who do not have free will would be incapable of imagining the idea of magic because free will is required for the idea of magic to exist?

what the fucking fuck?

edit: what does that even have to do with game design? You know full well that thats not what Toady means by a "No-magic" world

Toady One intends to define whether the beings in a specific world have free will or not in mythgen, so it does have a lot to do with game design.

I'm not arguing that free will works by magic, I am arguing that magic is the same thing as free will; or rather what we think of as magic is to free will as a mole is to a mountain.  For my conscious decisions to freely alter what I do, means that the state of the neurons in my brain, functioning like everything else in the material universe be able to be influenced by consciousness.  This stands in direct opposition to a non-free will situation where you are only consciously aware of what you neurons are doing, they are working solely according to the laws of physics and therefore there is only ever one decision you could have made.

The fireballs and lightning bolts kind of magic (what we mean by a world with magic), that is just a step up from free-will.  Instead of altering merely the neurons in our brain, we are now altering the functioning of the wider universe.  To say to the table "catch fire" is just a step up from telling our neurons to "move our hand left".  Remember there is no objective boundaries to our material body, there is no definite point at which our brain ends and our body begins, also no definite point at which are body ends and the rest of the universe begins. 

Again I am agnostic as to the existence of free will.  I am just pointing out the implications of it existing.